Gouging Out Eyes - 1st Samuel 11

Chapter 11 seems pretty straight forward but there’s a lot of background information that makes it interesting. Samuel had just crowned Saul king and my assumption would be that Saul would now start doing kingly duties, but apparently not enough of the tribes supported him to make a unified country so Saul went home and started being a farmer again. The geography is important here because Saul is from Gibeah, and we’ve heard that name before, Gibeah is the town in Benjamin that 100 years ago, raped that concubine to death, and the husband cut up her body and sent it to the other tribes demanding that they come and avenge her death and they did and almost completely wiped out the tribe of Benjamin. So Saul is from Gibeah where this horrible event occurred. But we also need to remember that after they killed almost the entire tribe of Benjamin, the people felt bad so they went to the town Jabesh-Gilead because they refused to fight against Benjamin, and they killed everyone in that town except the 400 unmarried girls who they then took and gave to the few men left in Benjamin to repopulate their tribe. So the few surviving girls of the town of Jabesh-Gilead were given to the few surviving men of Gibeah to build up the tribe again. TB summarizes, “The result was that Yavesh0Gilead and Gibeah had close family ties. Lots of intermarriage had taken place and most of the inhabitants of the two cities were now closely related by blood. The majority of children born to the tribe of Benjamin after the Judges incident had mothers from the tribe of Gad and fathers from the tribe of Benjamin. Further since Yavesh0Gilead had essentially sided with Benjamin when no one else would, there was now a close bond between these folks… But there was also a less than cordial relationship between Yavesh-Gilead and the rest of Israel who had mercilessly attacked them for merely refusing to participate in the war.” It’s also important to note that Jabesh-Gilead was on the east side of the Jordan river and Gibeah was about 40 miles south west on the Israel side of the river.

With all that context, we now find that about a month after Saul was coronated, an Ammonite by the name of Nahash came to Jabesh-Gilead on the east side of the Jordan river and “encamped” against them, which means they laid siege to the city. Nahash, as an Ammonite, was surely there to reclaim the land he thought was stolen from his people back under the judge Jephthah. Laying siege to a city was a pretty standard way to try to conquer a city without committing your soldiers to bloodshed and a common way of ending the siege with minimal loss of life was, if the city was not strong enough to fight off the aggressors, then they would contact the person in charge and say exactly what the men of Jabesh-Gilead said which was “make a treaty with us.” This tactic of laying siege to a city was a common way to get them to pay tribute to you as conqueror which would increase your wealth, power, and status. Gaining tribute and power over another city was almost always the motivation for these types of attacks, so the aggressors were motivated to keep the work force healthy enough to work and pay that tribute, so they didn’t want to actively fight against the people they were trying to oppress because they wanted the people healthy enough to work to pay that tribute and they wanted ownership over the city and everything in it, so they didn’t want to cause property damage over the things that they wanted to control. So a treaty was usually a win/win, TB says, “the attacking force didn’t waste time or resources in battle nor did they heavily damage property that they wished to acquire; and the besieged didn’t die or lost their homes and livelihoods.”

With that motivation in mind, after saying, “hey we’ll make a treaty with you,” Nahash’s answer to them was outrageous for a lot of reasons. Nahash answers, “On this condition will I make a covenant with you, that I may thrust out all your right eyes, and lay it for a reproach upon all Israel.” Now this didn’t make sense for a lot of reasons, for one, it’s horrific, why would anyone agree to that, and for two, taking the morality out of it, if you blind the population, how are they supposed to work and pay tribute? It doesn’t make any sense.. TB says, “to gouge out the right eye of every make o Gilead would do nothing but greatly reduce the amount of tribute possible.” TB suggests that the only reason that would explain this is just pure hatred. He didn’t care about the money, he just did this for the love of the game. Could you imagine what it would take physically to gouge out an eye, let alone thousands of eyes are the people screamed? Like that’s insane.

The leaders of Jabesh-Gilead answered in probably the only way that they could, “Give us seven days respite, that we may send messengers unto all the coasts of Israel: and then, if there be no man to save us, we will come out to thee.” I guess if it’s between having your eyes gouged out or the certain death of trying to fight against a superior force, then it makes sense but man how bleak. Why would Nahash agree to let them try to find help for 7 days? TB suggests that it was because he was in it for maximum humiliation, he wanted the plight of the people to have the word spread far as wide, and on top of that, he probably didn’t think that anyone would come to help them because he knew their history and that they were on the outs with Israel. He wanted them to feel dread and despair and he wanted his name and the fear that came with it to be put into the hearts of people in the distance. I mean, really, there’s nothing better for a psychopath, ultimate power, psychologically. Additionally, TB says “a siege is a long lasting event (it can be months), so a week is a rather should period of time.”

The messengers of Jabesh-Gilead run right to Gibeah, which makes sense because they are close family and are aligned politically, and the people of Gibeah freak out and the messengers come to Saul and tell him what’s going on. Importantly, when he hears what happened, “the Spirit of God came upon Saul… and his anger was kindled greatly.” Now as far as we know, Saul doesn’t have any military training or experience, but the Spirit of God came upon him and told him what to do. And ultimately, this makes a lot of sense because this was the ultimate way to unite the tribes behind one leader. It’s weird the way that God used this horrible scenario to unite the tribes behind His chosen leader. Interesting to consider all the things that had to be put into place to make this happen.

Saul takes the oxen that he was using to plow the field and cuts them into pieces and sends them to all the tribes in Israel saying “whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and after Samuel, so shall it be done unto his oxen. And the fear of the Lord fell upon the people.” Saul not only says that this is HIS call but also Samuels. I don’t know if he talked to Samuel about this beforehand, my guess is not, but I think Samuel was ok with it. It’s also important to note that it says that “the fear of the Lord fell upon the people,” so there was some supernatural steering done there as well. This wasn’t just where the entire country sees a situation that is happening to their countrymen that they don’t like and suddenly they rally behind national identity, there was some hand of God baked into that as well. Saul cutting up the oxen is also a call back to when the concubine was cut into pieces and sent to the tribe as a call to battle. TB suggests that this was Saul’s way of saying, “hey Israel, remember when you almost destroyed the whole tribe of Benjamin, your family, well now it’s time to pay your debt for that.” TB also says that this was an intimidation tactic used by Saul that threatened violence to any who did not participate.

All the tribes of Israel send 300,000 soldiers and Judah sent 30,000. Why would they number Judah separately from the rest of Israel? TB says that it’s because Judah is already starting to become a separate entity away from the rest of the northern tribes. I don’t know how they assembled those troops so fast, but they gather the troops and met in Bezek. They tell the messengers to go back to Jabesh-Gilead and tell the leadership that by that time tomorrow, help would be there. I couldn’t imagine the anxiety that must have been swirling in the leadership of Jabesh-Gilead while waiting to hear back from those messengers. For all they know, no one is coming to save them and in just a few days, they were going to have to walk out their front gates and submit to having their eye gouged out just to save the women and children of their city. Like I could not even image what terror filled them while waiting.

Once the messengers return and tell them that help will be there by noon tomorrow, the leaders send out a coy message to Nahash saying, “Tomorrow we will come out unto you, and ye shall do with us all that seemeth good unto you.” TB notes that the translation of this verse varies between versions but his version says basically just the first part, “tomorrow we will come out unto you.” This doesn’t commit them to having their eyes gouged out but is vague enough that I’m sure that Nahash read it that way, because he genuinely didn’t think anyone was coming to help them. So the next day Nahash, I’m sure, was ready to take their surrender, so imagine his surprise when 330,000 Israelite soldiers show up and just absolutely start to decimate them to the point that “two of them were not left together.”

The victory was so profound and everyone was so happy with Saul as a leader that they started to think that those who previously didn’t support him should be put to death. Maybe they were a little bloodthirsty at this moment. Unfortunately, if they had started to execute who didn’t previously support Saul, that would have wiped out almost all of the tribe of Judah, and TB points out that even though they didn’t whole heartedly support Saul, they supported him enough to answer his call to arms by giving 30,000 troops. Interestingly, they didn’t ask Saul if they should start executing non-supporters, they asked Samuel who was still the acting Judge at that point. They asked Samuel, but Saul answered the question saying, “there shall not a man be put to death this day: for to day the Lord hath wrought salvation in Israel.” Samuel was asked the question, but Saul answered, thus marking, at that very moment, according to TB, the point where the era of the judges ended and the era of the kings began. Also interesting that Saul gave the glory for the victory to God. It is a good start to his reign, promising.

Now, all the people are united behind Saul as their king and they all go to Gilgal “and there they made Saul king before the Lord in Gilgal; and there they sacrificed sacrifices of peace offerings before the Lord; and there Saul and all the men of Israel rejoiced greatly.” Again, according to TB, Gilgal was the place that was considered the spiritual hub at that point and almost certainly where the ark of the covenant was, and it was before the ark of the covenant that the people crowned Saul king